Tag: Loving others

Morning Musing: 1 John 4:20

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“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (ESV – Read the chapter) 

Every now and then you come across a verse you’d rather just leave alone all things considered. If you could unread it somehow you might really consider doing that. Or, you could be convinced to make up something that isn’t totally true in order to fall generally in line with whatever it seems to be saying. This is one of those verses. 

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 (Part 2)

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“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people–not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. . . .For what have I to do with judging outsiders?  Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?  God judges those outside.  ‘Purge the evil person from among you.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

So in the last note, we talked about the fact that there are times and situations when it is right and appropriate for the church to remove an incorrigibly errant member from its fellowship.  I said at the end that there is another part to Paul’s argument here.  Verse 11 (the focus of part one) is surrounded by verses dealing with this other part.  The ratio is 4:1.  Why so much more on this here than that there?  Because Paul likely understood that our temptation would be to get his intention in v. 11 backwards (boy was he right!) and he wanted to try and keep us from doing that.   Read the rest…